Visions Clamber (Glosa-Poe)

“Such hilarious visions clamber
Through the chamber of my brain —
Quaintest thoughts — queerest fancies
Come to life and fade away”
― Edgar Allan Poe

As the sun surrenders
Shadows begin the show
Tugging on the strings of my mind
The puppet master commands--
Buried emotions--forgotten memories 
Seeping from the iced amber;
Haunting pages filled
Poured from the bottle of my soul--
Words morph -- bending timbre
Such hilarious visions clamber

Ale does not drown these ghosts
They live to haunt me another night;
Tapping on my window
Seeking the outside world--
Constantly pestering--annoyingly pecking
Like ravens at my window pane
Until I cannot bare it anymore
Opening the window to my soul--
Words fly--swooping low
Through the chamber of my brain

The amber no longer calms
The rattling in my mind
Only words to paper
Hold my cure--
Night’s obsession--all consuming
To the highest degrees;
Life becomes poetry
Memories become stories
From fairies to banshees--
Quaintest thoughts — queerest fancies

This obsession takes its toll
An empty lonely heart
Tells no more tales;
The night could not satisfy--
Rhythm and rhyme--amber and ale
At sun’s first ray
The fog lifts--
Freeing the pain--freeing the soul
Nightmares see the light of day
Come to life and fade away

-----

dVerse Form for All: Paying Tribute, Page and the Glosa


The glosa is a form of poetry from the late 14th century and was popular in the Spanish court. The introduction, the cabeza, is a quatrain quoting a well-known poem or poet. The second part is the glosa proper, expanding on the theme of the cabeza, consisting of four ten-line stanzas, with the lines of the cabeza used to conclude each stanza. Lines six and nine must rhyme with the borrowed tenth.There are no rules governing meter and line length, except that traditionally, they emulate the style of the lines in the cabeza.

Because of its structure, the glosa is ideally used as a poem of tribute--mine happens to pay tribute to Edgar Allen Poe. It is probably the longest poem I have written recently and is just my interpretation of what it must have been like to be him, the experiences he had, and had to have bottled up inside, to write they way he did.